Allotments 4 All

Hello everyone,

I think I've caught up on all the reading. So many wonderful varieties being shared again this year!
I'm drying, sorting and counting seeds. It's been a very difficult season here, really testing my mostly hands off approach. We've also been living in the middle of building work for the last 3 months which is an "interesting experience".

I'll post the list as soon as I can and make sure everything is in the post by the end of the month.

Here are some more seeds to contribute to the seed circle.Beans bamberger rote and princess.Two turkish pepers; sera demre 8 and demre T .Both are sweet pepers.Watermelon siyah also from turkey.Armenian cucumber i put also seeds in the seedcircle.I dont know the variety but it grows well on a sheltered place or inside a greenhouse.I have some baytreeseeds not much but if somebody wants to grow a baytree it is a nice experiment

This is why I have always shied away from IoW's offering.  I thought renaming was a Victorian thing and now no longer practiced.  Mere adaptation would not qualify for renaming, as I see it! And by definition, it is utterly unlikely that any actual breeding work had been going on to justify the name change.

However, this has stimulated me to look at Tuinen d W's offer of garlics and also of potatoes.  Both astounding.  Including one of Jayb's Black Lippy.  Which I unfortunately lost during the move.

And the other bit of relevant news is that the government is currently negotiating SPS agreements with the EU.  Once these are in place, Brexit seed and plant restrictions on purchases should be gone.  Finally! 

Quote from: Vetivert on November 06, 2026, 21:53:23Years ago in the pre-Brexit era I purchased Floha and a bunch of other garlics from De Tuinen van Weldadigheid
https://winkel.detuinenvanweldadigheid.nl/collections/knofloken
Successful harvest but life got in the way that season and I never got around to planting them again, and I couldn't get more post-import restrictions. Shame we don't have such a selection this side of the Channel. And at such a reasonable price, too!

It was your discovery of the range of garlic offered by Da Tuinen which sparked my interest so I'm very pleased to be able to send you some Floha bulbils which are a result of that contact. I know at the time (2020?) you were interested in the idea of letting a range of hard necked garlic varieties flower with a view to trying a bit of cross pollination. I've kept most of my Da Tuinen selection of eight or nine varieties going, but have never managed any cross-pollination.  I've enjoyed the scapes though!

I agree that it's a great pity that we don't have a selection like that this side of the channel. As far as I understand it, the selection offered from the Isle of Wight, which I imagine has cornered the market for fairly serious growers, has taken traditional varieties, selected a bit, changed the name to something with Wight in, and therefore lost and obscured the history and origin of each strain. Such a pity.

Years ago in the pre-Brexit era I purchased Floha and a bunch of other garlics from De Tuinen van Weldadigheid
https://winkel.detuinenvanweldadigheid.nl/collections/knofloken
Successful harvest but life got in the way that season and I never got around to planting them again, and I couldn't get more post-import restrictions. Shame we don't have such a selection this side of the Channel. And at such a reasonable price, too!

oh yes please for the garlic

Believe it or not a third. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HQKGQSXK

Garlic Flöha does originate in Flöha in the East of Germany not far from the Czech/Polish border, but it is not available in Germany!  It was taken to Canada and came back from there.  It is however preserved in the Gatersleben seed bank.  From where Vreeken Zaden got it.  And made it commercially available in the Netherlands.  They write: 

"One of the newer Porcelain varieties in our assortment. Floha originates from the former East Germany. This one was carefully preserved by the gene bank IPG Gatersleben Germany under number ALL264. You can expect a medium-sized bulb with an average of 6 cloves per bulb. The yield increases during warm and sunny summers. In the kitchen, this is a versatile garlic: not too spicy but with a long aftertaste...

How delicious can also be beautiful... (or vice versa). This tasty member of the garlic family grows with one or more curls in the stem and is (therefore) particularly decorative. Spiral garlic is called hardneck garlic in English and is generally more robust in flavor than the so-called softneck varieties.

https://www.vreeken.nl/products/306255-1?_pos=1&_psq=fl%C3%B6ha&_psid=6ace16e9c&_ss=e

Honeynut Squash what a fabulous breeding story.  See wikipedia.  And it is a fertile interspecies variety too.  Mazourek who finally developed it, is of course well known for his Beauregarde Mangetout Pea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeynut_squash#:~:text=Honeynut%20squash%20is%20a%20butternut,and%20becomes%20sweeter%20and%20richer.
 

Both would be welcome Jan, thank you.